The ash crisis is just the tip of the iceberg of diseases threatening the
countryside and may never be eradicated, the Environment Secretary warned
yesterday.

Promising a "radical" overhaul in environmental protection, Owen Paterson admitted the deadly disease was just one of a number that are increasingly threatening British trees.

The disease, known as Chalara fraxinea, which originated in Japan, is thought to have come over from Europe on the wind. There is no cure for ash dieback, which also spread into nurseries via imports.

Announcing new plans to fight the crisis yesterday, he admitted it will not be “possible to eradicate” the disease after scientists found it had spread to mature species.

While he ruled out cutting down or burning mature ash to stop it spreading further, he admitted that newly planted species and those in nurseries would be destroyed if they showed signs of the disease.

The new action plan was announced after he chaired the government’s emergency committee Cobra, usually only convened for terrorist or other national security emergencies.

Mr Paterson said scientific advice had concluded it was not “possible to eradicate this disease now that we have discovered it in mature trees”.

While he suggested that some trees might naturally develop an immunity to the disease, he warned ash dieback was a "long term, intractable problem".

He admitted it was the just one of a number of tree diseases increasingly threatening British species.

"There are a number of dangerous diseases out there which pose a real threat to significant volumes of species here and could have a devastating effect on our environment,” he said.

"I'm prepared to look very radically at how we protect our environment.”

Campaigners last night broadly welcomed the plans but questions remained over where new funding would be found.

With it threatening at least 80 million trees across swathes of the country, the number of confirmed cases yesterday rose from 115 sites to 129 and is expected to rise further.

Officials said sites included 64 cases in woodland, mainly in East Anglia and the south east, 50 newly planted areas including in Devon, the Midlands and Yorkshire and 15 nurseries.

More than 100,000 trees have been destroyed to date, with officials from Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) admitting that figure would rise.

The Forestry Commission estimates there are almost 20 tree diseases currently in Britain.

Mr Paterson also suggested ash could be imported into the country and planted in gardens once as soon as next year in "disease free zones" within Britain although he stressed an import ban remains in place. He said it was too early to say where cuts might be made to pay for the extra resources.

Members of the public will also be urged to look out for a range of new tree diseases as part of new “early warning network”.

There are fears that Britain's ash trees face a similar fate to its elms, which were destroyed by Dutch elm disease in the 1970s.

There is no cure for ash dieback, which spread into nurseries via imports this summer, but some trees have already shown resistance.

The UK imports around 500,000 ash trees every year. Up to nine in 10 ash trees in some areas of the Europe are infected with the disease.